$48.6 million: Attorney General's Office

Travis Fain, tfain@dailypress.com

Editor's note: This is part of an everyday series exploring individual line items in state and local budgets. Read the entire series atwww.dailypress.com/watchdog.

The Virginia attorney general's annual budget approaches $50 million, much of which is used to track down Medicaid fraud, collect money owed the state and enforce a settlement agreement with tobacco companies.

The tobacco money, in turn, is used to dole out economic development grants, particularly in areas hit by the downturn in tobacco use. Some of the money is also used to fund the Office of the Attorney General as it audits and inspects retailers to ensure they're complying with the settlement.

The office's cigarette unit also investigates cigarette tax stamp counterfeiting and cigarette smuggling, according to Michael Kelly, spokesman for Attorney General Mark Herring.

The Medicaid fraud effort costs about $12 million a year, and turned up about $61 million last year, under former Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli, Kelly said. It also won an award, being named the best such unit in the country earlier this year.

The attorney general himself makes $150,000 a year, plus $9,000 a year for expenses. He gets a car for official business, though Kelly said in an email that Herring's personal business "is still handled in his 1999 GMC Jimmy."

Less than half the department's budget comes from the state's general fund. It gets about $9.6 million a year from the federal government, and another $17.7 million in "special" funds.

That's a budgetary designation that means different things for different state departments. In the attorney general's case, it covers money that comes in from asset forfeiture and various revolving funds that flow in from consumer protection and debt collection work, Kelly said.